What next? Astronomers, Celebrities or the CIA?

reply to post by IsaacKoi

If I had throw in my vote I'd go with the CIA. The few conversations I've had with Brad Sparks definitely suggest the CIA angle has teeth. Anything you might be able to add about the the CIA's Over The Horizon radar system or Robert M.L. Baker's 1968 congressional hearing comment that,

There is only one surveillance system, known to me, that exhibits sufficient and continuous coverage to have even a slight opportunity of betraying the presence of anomalistic phenomena operating above the Earth's atmosphere. This system is partially classified and, hence, I cannot go into great detail at an unclassified meeting .... Since this particular sensor system has been in operation, there have been a number of anomalistic alarms. Alarms that, of this date, have not been explained.

Would be very welcome. I'm also fairly interested in the early warning military radar networks. This would tie in fairly nicely with Palladium (as mentioned by Kandinsky). Personally I still find it somewhat curious that the CIA allegedly wanted to setup a pro-UFO full-scale scientific investigation of UFO's that was permanent and ongoing at MIT, but that the AF killed the plan and got so pissed off that the CIA was trying to take over UFO intelligence that the AF setup the Robertson Panel as a dirty trick to blow up in CIA's faces and get them off the AF's back. There's a lot to work with there.

CIA

Astronomers


I possess very interesting -CIA- ufo/FOIA docs which a ufo researcher sent me back in the early 1990's. But alas, I possess NO scanner (much less a vid cam) or printer, faxer, copier, etc, just this lil ol humble (and not even made wireless) interwebs box of mine.
I guess I need to get some motivation and go git those techee things. My excuse is, I have been waiting for this humid terrible heat wave to subside. It drains all my energy.

reply to post by Xtraeme

Would be very welcome. I'm also fairly interested in the early warning military radar networks. This would tie in fairly nicely with Palladium (as mentioned by Kandinsky). Personally I still find it somewhat curious that the CIA allegedly wanted to setup a pro-UFO full-scale scientific investigation of UFO's that was permanent and ongoing at MIT, but that the AF killed the plan and got so pissed off that the CIA was trying to take over UFO intelligence that the AF setup the Robertson Panel as a dirty trick to blow up in CIA's faces and get them off the AF's back. There's a lot to work with there.

*INTRIGUING!*

reply to post by Xtraeme
It's interesting to read some of the histories of USAF, OSI, CIA that *don't* relate to ufology. There's an assumption by so many that they're all conspiring together in some 'Great Unified Cover-up.' The truth is that they are rivals and seem to enjoy getting one over on each other. I guess when you're in the business of knowledge and secrets, it's bad practice to let your rivals know what you know or what you can do.

Speaking of the Robertson panel, did you recently mention having Adobe-pro at work? I was looking at the famous Chadwell Letter (CIA FOIA) and wondering if it could be cleaned up into a readable, searchable document? He was quite a player and there's very little about him; Rockefeller employee, OSI agent and apparently took the existence of UFOs and flying saucers for granted.

reply to post by IsaacKoi


I'll put in my vote.... Ufos and celebrities. They have such a huge impact on the people and I would like to hear more. I also like the idea about odd ufo theories. Peace!

Sir, how about the O'hare 2006 sighting? Have you researched it or have you and the others doing the mass downloads come across anything on it?

Originally posted by type0civ
Sir, how about the O'hare 2006 sighting? Have you researched it or have you and the others doing the mass downloads come across anything on it?

Hi,

I don't currently have any plans to look into the O'hare sighting, nor have I come across any official material relating to it in the mass downloading of Project Bluebook material (which officially ended in 1969) or the Canadian material.

I have, of course, come across material on the Internet relating to that case - including a detailed report by Martin Shough and others on the NARCAP website:
www.narcap.org...

All the best,

Isaac

I'll vote for UFO disclosure by the CIA.
Nevertheless I hope we will see the other threads as well.
The vast amount of information you manage to get in your threads is always very impressive.
Thank you.

Originally posted by derpif
I'll vote for UFO disclosure by the CIA.

Well, the CIA thread has now moved ahead and become the top choice - but I'm a bit concerned that most of the people that support that option may have an unrealistic expectation of the depth I can explore some of the issues...

I can outline the available documents (many of which are not very well known on ATS) and highlight some of the more contentious issues (putting forward the alternative views on them, pointing to some of the evidence for and against those views) - but I will not be able to reach definitive conclusions of many of those issues. The material simply isn't available, to the best of my knowledge.

I suppose I could, however, include in the relevant thread some pointers to some groups and individuals that I know or believe have some pieces of the puzzle that aren't on the Internet or published in any book I've seen, but I'd need quite a bit of material and help from those groups and people to reach more definitive conclusions in these murky waters.

Frankly, I would not expect many UFO researchers and other relevant people to provide the required cooperation. Many of them have limited time available to scan material for me and/or may have plans to write a book etc.

Some of the relevant individuals and researchers have, after all, spent a considerable amount of time and effort accumulating relevant document and material - they are not under any obligation to share it freely, particularly if sharing it would be time consuming for them since few of them will have someone available to scan material (indeed, some of them may not even have the necessary equipment to scan documents).

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
...but I'm a bit concerned that most of the people that support that option may have an unrealistic expectation of the depth I can explore some of the issues...

Judging by your other threads I think the opposite will be true.
Maybe the current title, if it stays that way, could cause some confusion.
But that must not necessarily be a bad thing.
Your threads are usually getting the attention of many other high quality contributors.
So chances are if indeed something of value is missing someone will fill in the gap.

Eta:
And that not all of the information can be accessible is in the nature of the topic and should be expected.

reply to post by derpif


First, let me say how much I admire the work you do here. I am impressed with the depth of your research and the soundness of your interpretations. You must be an excellent barrister!

As to which topic is more deserving of your attention, I agree with the consensus that no-one wants to know whether Jim Carrey has ever seen a UFO. (I'm guessing the answer is "yes.") Both remaining topics are potentially very fruitful, although the CIA route is guaranteed to plow through many, many hoaxes. Any charlatan who wants to create the impression that they are "in the know" will claim to be "ex-CIA," knowing that it is impossible to confirm or deny that claim. In addition, there have been countless forged documents floated. If you seriously want to evaluate all these claims, I will hold you in absolute awe.

Hey Issac,

Looking at the CIA site. It's only 242 records and there isn't much data associated with the PDF. Do you just want them all downloaded and that one sentence associated with the PDF through a spreadsheet?

That seems very doable...

Jeff

Originally posted by idealord
Looking at the CIA site. It's only 242 records and there isn't much data associated with the PDF. Do you just want them all downloaded and that one sentence associated with the PDF through a spreadsheet?

That seems very doable...

Yes, but the tricky bit (at least to me) is trying to get the relevant number of pages which is associated with the GIF (but probably not the PDF). I want to check the total number of pages against the numbers I have for releases by the CIA.

Since it is only 242 records, I could do this manually - but I'd rather not do that rather boring job (which would also be prone to human error) if this page number information is easily added to the spreadsheet automatically...

To download the GIFs or PDFs, I can use my download manager to download all the links of a certain type on a page. Since there are only a few pages, this part is very easy.

Similarly, subject to sorting out the formatting, I could cut and paste the relevant one sentence descriptions of each document into a table myself - so if this is technically difficult to automate I'll just do it the old fashioned way.


All the best,

Isaac

Do you not trust that the PDF's and GIF's are the same? Why not just download all the PDF's?

Taking a look at the HTML now...

Also, when I search on just UFO (and not ufo.txt) I get 332 docs...

Jeff

Originally posted by idealord
Do you not trust that the PDF's and GIF's are the same?

No, it not that... I want to compare the number of pages of the PDF/GIF with the numbers I have for releases of documents by the CIA in the 1970s.

While I have not seen anyone else make the point, the Air Force's own website, the National Archives website and Footnote.com combined do not include all the documents the Air Force has released over the years. I'm not sure if the same applies to the CIA website. Hence my desire, for starters, to know how many pages the CIA website has in the relevant PDFs (or GIFs - the number presumably being the same, but I think can more easily be automatically collated from the URLs for the GIFs since when you click on a GIF link for a record you are taken to a page which states the numbers of pages in that record).

Why not just download all the PDF's?

I will.

I can then count the number of pages from the PDFs or ...

Hang on --

---

If I download all the PDF and print them out then I can use a photocopier in my office to produce a paginated copy - getting the number of pages quite quickly that way...



Ok, I should I have thought of that before.

So, no need for an automated system to collate the number of pages...


All the best,

Isaac

I, and it looks like most here, really could care less what celebrities think or have to say. Brad Pitt saw a UFO, whoopee.. they are too busy looking pretty and spewing political nonsense anyway...

I would be more interested in the alphabet soup agency thread, no matter if it was the CIA, NSA, or DIA which I think the DIA is up to their necks in the knowledge behind whatever these 10-20% of unknowns would be. I would say that they all have their hands in it but would suspect that each agency has their own dirty little secrets to with hold, even from each other, and rightly so in some cases.

BTW, I felt the Earth shake when your last multipost was destroyed. People.. did you even get an apology from any of them?

As i said Astronomers would be the right choice to choose

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

It's interesting to read some of the histories of USAF, OSI, CIA that *don't* relate to ufology. There's an assumption by so many that they're all conspiring together in some 'Great Unified Cover-up.' The truth is that they are rivals and seem to enjoy getting one over on each other. I guess when you're in the business of knowledge and secrets, it's bad practice to let your rivals know what you know or what you can do.

Absolutely spot on. Without some general understanding of how the intelligence agencies work. The mind, working in a vacuum, starts to see what it wants. I only wish more people had an interest in history. Then they'd realize it's ludicrous to think that all these intelligence organizations are colluding with each other, when most of the time they're at each others throats.

Speaking of the Robertson panel, did you recently mention having Adobe-pro at work? I was looking at the famous Chadwell Letter (CIA FOIA) and wondering if it could be cleaned up into a readable, searchable document? He was quite a player and there's very little about him; Rockefeller employee, OSI agent and apparently took the existence of UFOs and flying saucers for granted.

I tried running it through a few different OCR tools, but almost all of them output gibberish.

www.4shared.com...

It's at least a starting point.

reply to post by Nikola014


Is that a telescope in your pocket or are you just happy to be here?

reply to post by Xtraeme
Thanks for trying.

The 'gibberish' doc got a pass, the other two look pretty much the same as the one off the CIA site. There's probably no incentive for their archivist to try and provide a better version for a bunch of sub-culture document collectors.

To use an old American colloquialism...aw shucks.